Skip to content

Study with Me - Hustle & Chill

2020-08-11 · Study with me · Ali · recording, 7:03 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying (also: Productivity and time) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Sponsor segment present, Aimed at students, Evidence-based framing

In a study-with-me vlog of a USMLE Step 1 study day, streamed live on Twitch, Ali writes active recall questions from Pathoma into Notion toggles, tests himself on old chapters from the back with delayed and immediate active recall, studies with his friend Osaid and writes off the evening by his write-off principle.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Morning, a Zoom call and starting the Twitch study-with-me stream

  • ★★ Ali is preparing for USMLE Step 1 because he is vaguely considering moving to America for his medical residency. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · USMLE, United States
  • ★ At 10 a.m. Ali has a Zoom call with an animations company he might be interested in working with. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · Zoom
  • ★★ Ali streams himself studying live on Twitch, which he says makes it more fun and encourages him to actually work rather than waste time; he says everyone should try it. — 00:00:00 · Twitch

00:00:46 — Pathoma vascular pathology with active recall questions in Notion; applying for Twitch partnership

  • ★★ Going through the pathology resource Pathoma, Ali watches its videos at double speed and writes questions to test himself on later: active recall, which he calls the most efficient study technique of all time, shown by decades of research. — 00:00:46 · Notion, active recall
  • ★★ Ali hides the answers to his active recall questions with Notion's toggle feature; some answers he types out, for others he screenshots the video or textbook to save time. — 00:00:46 · Notion, active recall
  • ★ After 35 minutes of studying Ali loses concentration and takes a 20-minute break to answer questions from his live-stream chat. — 00:01:15
  • ★★ Instead of more active recall Ali applies for Twitch partnership; a few days later Twitch rejects him because, apparently, he is not famous enough on YouTube. — 00:01:44 · Twitch, active recall

00:02:20 — Delayed active recall from the back, colour coding in red, getting stuff wrong

  • ★★ Ali reviews a chapter from the back and works in reverse, because otherwise it is too tempting to know the first few pages really well and neglect what comes later. — 00:02:20 · active recall
  • ★★ Ali's delayed active recall tests him on material from a few weeks ago, using the spaced repetition effect to combat the forgetting curve. — 00:02:20 · active recall, spaced repetition, forgetting curve
  • ★★ Ali looks up understanding gaps on Google, probably reading up on Wikipedia, and colours forgotten items red, so that next time, to save time, he tests himself only on what he got wrong. — 00:02:49 · Google, Wikipedia

  • ★★★ Ali tells students that forgetting and getting things wrong is a necessary and important part of learning, nothing to be ashamed of: getting things wrong and correcting them is how we learn. — 00:02:49

    “Getting stuff wrong and correcting it is literally how we learn.”

00:03:21 — Immediate active recall; group study with Osaid on AMBOSS questions and Anki decks

  • ★★ After delayed active recall on old material, Ali does 45 minutes of immediate active recall on the morning's vascular pathology, to reactivate knowledge that slipped away in the past two hours. — 00:03:21 · active recall
  • ★★ Ali's friend Osaid, also preparing for the USMLE, joins him for a group study session; for an hour they work through AMBOSS question-bank questions and get less than 10% right. — 00:03:21 · USMLE
  • ★ Ali and Osaid then set up pre-made Anki decks, tweak the settings and work through cards for an hour. — 00:03:50 · Anki

00:04:19 — Afternoon slump on Twitter and the Brilliant sponsor read

  • ★ At 5 p.m. Ali spends half an hour on the sofa scrolling Twitter, until he remembers he is a productivity guru who would get kicked off YouTube. (playful) — 00:04:19 · Twitter, Twitch

00:05:38 — Writing the rest of the day off: guitar, a board game and Korean drama clips

  • ★★ Ali says he will be doing Twitch live streams daily from around August 2020. (hedged) — 00:06:08 · Twitch
  • ★★★ Feeling unproductive and short of sleep, Ali applies the write-off principle he came up with a few months earlier: in an unproductive slump, write the rest of the day off and do fun stuff. — 00:06:08
  • ★ In the evening Ali plays the guitar and then the two-player board game Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation with Osaid, who plays it for the first time. — 00:06:08

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked whether one can learn graphic design and programming while studying for a medical degree, the channel answers that obviously one can. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: active recall · Osaid · Pathoma · USMLE · write-off principle

Also: Works: The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

Organizations: Google · Twitch · Twitter · Wikipedia

Concepts: forgetting curve · spaced repetition

Places: United States

Products: AMBOSS · Anki · Chemex · Notion · Zoom

Also centred on Osaid: How my friend ranked 1st at Medical School - The Active Recall Framework · Interviewing a Writer // Day in the Life VLOG

Also centred on write-off principle: 15 Lessons that Improved My Life

← Previous: The Happiness Advantage (Shawn Achor) - Book Summary · Next → How I Type REALLY Fast (156 Words per Minute)